SPAIN – basic information about the school
The CPR Plurilingüe La Grande Obra de Atocha is a catholic school founded in 1923. It is located in A Coruña, a city with more than 244.000 inhabitants, by the sea, in the north-west of Spain.
The school is in the city center, but their almost 1200 students not also come from this area but other areas of the city and even the outskirts, and most of them belong to families with a medium or low socioeconomic level. The school covers from Nursery to A levels and Vocational Education. There is a considerable number of immigrant students from different countries. Some others have special educational needs and they get the specific support according to their abilities even students with curricular adaptations. There are a few students in child protection centers and foster families. Some of them have behavioral, social exclusion, physical and psychological problems. It is therefore a priority for the management team and all the teaching staff to avoid the social exclusion risk of the students with disadvantaged conditions.
The almost 90 teachers are extremely interested in the learning of modern foreign languages therefore bilingual education has been gradually introduced in the curriculum (CLIL). We are involved in projects to improve foreign languages: linguistic aids, extracurricular activities, and the participation on different European projects with exchanges of students and teachers and cultural trips. The school is involved in an important innovation process for all levels: new technologies, the development of the students’ skills and competences through the design of lessons based on the theory of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences etc.
Teachers involved in the project have been promoting the importance of European identity and have experience in Comenius and Erasmus+ projects. The study of new languages is promoted in school with the benefit of multilingual and bilingual subjects, preparation for international exams, offering the possibility of living language immersion experiences.
There is also a big concern about the importance of taking care of our environment, and that is why we have developed a great number of projects in these field in the last few years. We have previously worked in a Comenius project called HEAL with some other European countries to enhance good health habits and best ways to take care of our natural resources, such as water. We also give a big role to Science in the school, participating every year in a Science Fair with all schools in the area, and in a Project Fair celebrated each year to share best practices. Last year, we also started our own Science Fair to show the work done during the year to the teaching community.
